Patients facing a six-month wait for a cataract operation will be offered faster treatment at a different hospital.

The new scheme has been unveiled by the Government as part of an ongoing drive to cut NHS waiting lists.

A similar system is also planned for patients waiting months for general and urology operations.

Sussex has had some of the longest waiting lists for treatment in England, which were caused by a combination of care home shortages, staff shortages and a high cost of living.

West Sussex took part in a pioneering pilot project a year ago to send dozens of patients abroad for cataract, knee and hip-replacement operations.

Fifteen patients from the Eastbourne area travelled to France for knee and hip operations at the end of last month.

Under the new cataract operations scheme, a specialist will offer a choice of two hospitals, rising to four in the future.

It could mean surgery taking place within weeks or a few months in a public or private hospital elsewhere in Britain, or even abroad in some cases.

The scheme, designed to stem criticism of Labour's failure to cut long NHS waiting times, has already been introduced in parts of the South-East.

Now it will be extended across the whole of the South from July, helping an estimated 10,000 patients.

Health Secretary Alan Milburn said the initiative would cut waiting times for a cataract operation to six months by next year and to three months by 2005.

The announcement for cataract patients in Sussex is part of a wider expansion of the patient choice scheme, to help 100,000 people nationwide.

If waiting times are cut to three months by 2005 it will mean the target has been hit three years ahead of the Department of Health's schedule.

Patients who have been waiting six months for a heart operation are already being offered treatment in another hospital.

But the scheme has been criticised because it involves diverting taxpayers' money, earmarked for the NHS, to profit-making health firms.